An Old Nemesis Returns In 'Chip/Tuck'

See Also: 'Chip/Tuck' Episode Guide

A familiar face returns in the twenty-first episode of CSI: Miami, "Chip/Tuck".

According to CSI Files sources, "Chip/Tuck" opens as the sun rises in Miami. A young woman named Rita wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings. When she sees the man in bed beside her, she smiles. She doesn't remember the man's name, but judging by his home, he's rich. Rita wakes the man up, calling him Chad, but he tells her he doesn't get up before 10:00am--and by the way, his name is Tyler Marr.

Rita is flirtatious--she may not remember his name, but she remembers everything else that happened the night before. She gets frisky, but before things can go too far, a loud noise interrupts the calm morning silence. It's some sort of machinery next door, and Tyler loses his patience. He goes to the balcony and tells the worker at the neighbor's house to turn the machine off, but the man ignores him.

Tyler rifles through a dresser drawer, complaining that he's had enough. Every morning there is some sort of disturbance at 7:00am that wakes him up. He finds what he's looking for and pulls it out: a video camera. He heads down to the front of his house, turning the camera on and speaking into it as he heads toward the neighbor's house and the offending machine. He comes up alongside the machine, the noise nearly drowning out his words as he speaks into the camera. Suddenly, blood sprays across the lens, and the camera falls to the ground. Blood obscures the view, but the sound of the machine continues until something gets jammed and it grinds to a halt. Silence descends.

Horatio walks up beside the machine, which is hooked up to a canvas-covered truck. He kneels down to turn off the camera before joining Tripp at the back of the truck. The machine is a wood chipper, and judging by the blood and gore sprayed around the edge of the truck and canvas, as well as the shredded belt hanging from the chipper's chute, something other than wood went through the blades. Tripp looks into the back of the truck, where the chipper deposited its contents. There's no way they're going to identify this person with a picture.

Tyler assumes that the victim is the gardener he saw from his balcony. However, the gardener is accounted for. The identity of the person that went through the wood chipper remains a mystery. The CSI team wraps the truck and wood chipper in plastic and takes it all back to the lab to be processed. Horatio's son Kyle helps Dr Price sift through the bloody wood mulch to find pieces of the victim's body. He pulls a bone out of the chipper's blades--this must be what jammed the machine and caused it to cut off. Dr Price identifies the bone as part of a person's femur. The bone is bowed and has hairline fractures that have healed over--the machine didn't cause those. Their victim was in remission from leukemia.

Natalia runs the DNA from the bone marrow and gets two distinct DNA profiles: the victim and his bone marrow donor. Neither person has their DNA in CODIS, but Natalia sees that the profiles have markers in common--the victim was related to his donor. Armed with this information, they are able to track down the victim's daughter, Lauren Reeger. She gives them a picture of her father, Dr Ethan Reeger. He was a plastic surgeon, she says. She also tells them that she and her father had drifted apart in recent years. After he beat leukemia, Lauren's mother was killed in a car accident. He threw himself into his job to deal with the loss.

Ryan and Calleigh go to visit Ethan's business partner, Dr Sean Loftin. They ask him not to notify Ethan's patients in case one of them was involved in the murder. Sean says that might be the truth--apparently, Ethan brought in ex-convicts to remove their tattoos. He also did house calls, which can be dangerous because emotions can run high in their business. Sean gives the CSIs Ethan's laptop, which contains files for all of his clients.

Eric runs each of Ethan's clients' names through the arrest record database. Horatio comes in when he's halfway through the list. So far, none of the names stand out as a possible killer. Eric locates someone with a connection to the case: Elizabeth Corbett. The wood chipper was parked outside the Corbett home when Ethan was killed, and Mrs Corbett was one of his patients--that can't be a coincidence.

However, Horatio is distracted and barely responds to this news. A client picture farther down the list has caught his eye, and he asks Eric to click it. Burns disfigure the person's face, but Horatio sees something familiar. He tells Eric to run the person through their facial recognition database. They get a hit: it's Ron Saris (Kim Coates), the man Horatio thought was killed when a boat exploded in the season premiere, "Resurrection". His old nemesis is alive, and he's in Miami.

Please note that the above plot details have not been confirmed by CBS, Alliance Atlantis or Bruckheimer Films, and until such time you should treat this information as you would any other rumour. The above information comes from early script drafts and the details of the episodes are liable to change before the episodes are shown.

"Chip/Tuck" will air April 13 on CBS.

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